I learned that the Japanese are dicks, and to never trust a British officer.

Nearly ending a film production because there isn’t any white women in it is the most absurd thing I’ve heard all 2017 but this is one of the best video essays I’ve seen so far this year as well so hats off to you your hard work is much appreciated

Lets face it. We are all doomed to mispronounce “kwai” til the end of time! Let us all accept that!

Terrific documentary. Learned more, even though I saw the dvd ‘making of’. A fight with Oscars as weapons? I hope it really happened (and no one was hurt). I always enjoyed and thought the blonde nurse sequence was necessary as in your own words: “showing the peace and comfort Shears is giving up”.

Lean had HUGE ears…

Just great. And I remember my dad and his friends (WWII and Korea vets), belting out the Colonel Bogey March with the Hitler lyrics during cookouts and poker games. Marvelous!

wonderful movie, I always thought the design of the bridge was based on the victorian rail bridge that links Edinburgh with the north east coast in Scotland, called The Forth Bridge, crossing the river Forth, they are identical in appearance. Twenty years ago I visited Sri Lanka and hired a driver and car to make a tour of the Island, I had in mind to find the location of the movie and armed with a map and directions from locals I found the sign pointing down a path off a single track road east of the town of Candy, the sign was crudely painted on a square piece of rusty tin and said….”location of the Bridge on The River Kwai. A ten minute walk down the path took me to the site of David Lean’s bridge set. It was hard to imagine that this was the same place as the vegetation had closed in and the river seemed much narrower and very shallow, I think various dams were built during filming to modify the width and depth of the river and to allow filming of the low tide where the explosive cable becomes visible in the water. On one side there was clearly visible a large rock on the river edge with large round holes bored into the rock and these were used to plant the main wooden logs that held up the bridge structure. I guess the most fascinating thing about visiting that location was that there was an middle aged man and his wife who lived in a modest cabin next to the river who gave guided tours and offered to ferry people across the river in a small two man coracle, he spoke quite good english and he informed me that he had appeared in the film, he was one of the children flying the kite in the village that William Hiolden crawls out the jungle to, you may remember the scene, he is almost delirious and mistakes the kite of the children for a vulture swooping down on him, so this man who had appeared as one of the children had remained by the river bank and was making a living giving tours to travellers and telling stories of his experience on the film, I was happy to have him show me around and ferry me across the river for photos, I ended up giving him around £20 which he was elated with, I later learned that £20 represented 6 months income to him.

Great, i love those movies with all these orchestrated big pictures in a real environment, this is very rare in today’s cinema.

“Do it for real!” That philosophy is what makes Werner Herzog’s films so intrigueing.

Thank you so much for this – brilliant work

My god, I love this film.

This is one of the best videos that anyone has done on this film. I’m from Sri Lanka (former Ceylon) and there are a few remains of the bridge still on either sides of the river banks. The river (Kitulgala river) is a major tourist attraction by now, and every time when people do white water rafting, they talk about The Bridge on the River Kwai. Anyway, thank you for these videos, I’ve been enjoying them a lot! Keep em coming.